Two words: jog wheels. The jogs on the Mixtrack are absolutely the best jog wheels you can get at this price point. They’re weighted really nicely and feel extremely solid and professional. They’re also slightly bigger than most controllers at this price range, at six inches, meaning that you’re getting a far more realistic feel than anything else on the market. So it’s important to point out early: if jog wheel quality is important to you, the Mixtrack is probably the controller you’ll want to buy.
But there’s more to this Serato controller than the jogs. The rest of the unit manages to pack a lot into a small, portable frame, including eight performance pads with four modes, six FX buttons, including two FX levers, dual-pass filter knobs per channel, deck control for C and D so you can control four decks from a two-channel controller, an on-jog screen with bpm, timing and more info and a looping button with double and halve buttons. Another excellent touch is the extra-long pitch fader, which allows you to dial in far more accurate pitch changes and adjustments, another feature you’re less likely to see on cheaper controllers.
With the excellent jogs and long-throw pitch faders, the Mixtrack is aimed at those who actually want to master traditional mixing techniques. Given Numark’s own history with turntablists and turntables, that’s not a surprise. To further that notion, there’s also pitch bend buttons that allow you to temporarily shift the tempo faster or slower while holding the appropriate button, another thing you rarely see on controllers of this type.
The fact that this is a Serato controller — software that’s always been the calling card of hip-hop, RnB and more tempo-diverse genres than house and techno — once again proves that, if the fundamentals of DJing are more important to you than more modern bells and whistles, or if your background is in vinyl mixing and you want to start on something digital, this controller is for you. That doesn’t mean it’s not got the modern bells and whistles. As we mentioned, it’s got FX, looping, filters, three-band EQ and the on-jog display on top those excellent jogs and the performance pads, which give you access to software specific functions like samplers, fader cuts that are essentially preset crossfader movements, auto loop lengths and hot cues.